


Touch and Go

by GrapeJellyfish



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Angst, Eventual Romance, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, M/M, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-02-07 17:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12846000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrapeJellyfish/pseuds/GrapeJellyfish
Summary: POST MANGA CANNON-"-it wasn’t Stein’s all too familiar appearance that baffled Spirit the most. It was as if the Meister had either suddenly begun expressing and feeling emotions, or, more believably, had gotten far better at feigning them. The latter seemed far more likely, but his consistently uncharacteristic behaviour led the weapon to entertain the thought that somehow his partner's time away had cured him of his blatant disregard for regular human empathy."With the apocalypse now out of the way, they both finally get a chance to pick up the pieces of the partnership they left behind all those years ago.





	1. Unease

The halls were bustling, students laughing, their pitched voices rising high, into the arched ceilings of the DWMA. It was crowded and loud, a typical happening between classes that Spirit usually celebrated; a chance to see his darling Maka before she whisked herself away to another lecture. Except today was different… Not only was Maka absent from class, due to some nefarious flu traveling around, but she had refused to see him that morning, leaving Spirit standing at her dorm’s doorstep like some discarded puppy dog, container of freshly made chicken soup in hand, along with his extinguished pride.  
Groaning, the redhead massaged his temples, stepping off of his daughter's porch, not only had his morning been wasted begging for Maka to let him in, he was still nursing a pounding hangover from the night before. “This is not my day.” The Death Scythe muttered darkly, dodging a gaggle of laughing students as he slowly made his way towards the Death Room. There was no reason for Kid- or, Lord Death rather, to need him, not so soon after the Kishin’s defeat. After all, he was no longer the primary death scythe at the DWMA. The reminder sparked a vivid feeling of jealousy in the pit of his stomach. It was only out of habit that the weapon found himself wandering, listlessly in the direction of that familiar Death Room, bitterness echoing in every footfall and reluctant pace forward.  
Spirit had never been one for change, yet somehow his life always seemed surrounded by it. The redhead worried his lip thoughtfully as he walked. Two weeks- it felt like years- It had been only two weeks since everything had changed. Since the moon went black, since Lord Death succeeded his title, since Stein and Marie…  
Spirit shook his head in a shallow attempt to clear his thoughts.  
It wasn’t working.  
“I still have to try my best for the next generation.”  
Marie’s words echoed in his head like a chant in Spirit's head, something he had yet to shake. It had taken a lot for Spirit to feign excitement when the blonde had revealed her pregnancy. They had all just been through hell and back. He was exhausted enough worrying about the madness still left within his daughter, where his place was by the new shinigami’s side…  
Watching Stein’s response, the meister he thought he knew so well, that smile… something he had worked so hard for in the past...The redhead felt a small pang in his gut as he turned a corner, one that felt strangely like jealousy, something he wrote off quickly as a bleary side effect from his hangover.  
The meister, his, meister had been smiling. He seemed so content. So… happy. That couldn’t have been it, could it? In all the years Spirit had spent familiarizing himself with the other man- Stein rarely smiled, and when he did it was loaded with meaning. The usually stoic meister had always been that way. Even gleaning a miniscule honest expression from the meister in the past, instead of the usual carefully calculated facade, had seemed almost an unachievable feat. Something, Spirit assumed, very few people, other than himself, ever had the privilege of witnessing. Something, he thought, was rarely doled out so willingly, so… normally. Something he thought would at least remain the same after everything that had happened. Was he really so out of touch that he misjudged the meister entirely? Was he so blind that he entirely overlooked such a drastic change in the one constant in his ever shifting world? Stein had always been that for Spirit; Some oblique, a stubbornly immovable object that was- annoyingly so- always in his way. Predictable in his unreliability. Stein was a living, breathing juxtaposition that the weapon had so often relied on as a sort of net for his own constantly failing cycle of routines. His composure and inability to empathize had always felt like a reassurance, a balance, to Spirit’s wild emotions and uncontrollable mood swings. That was, after all, why Lord Death had paired them in the first place.  
Wasn’t it? Uncertainty wavered in the back of Spirit's mind.  
Still, after all this time, the Death Weapon felt steadfastly unsure of his place within Death City. Part of him wondered if Kami had the right idea after all; fleeing in a whirlwind of scattered belongings and broken hearts. As much as Spirit would stubbornly refute it out loud, he felt as if Kami was right after all. He was useless as a father. As a weapon he could barely keep hold of the one thing Kami left for him; his standing as the primary death scythe. He was so quickly brushed aside as the arrogant Soul Eater Evans descended into the shinigami ranks under Kids’ “The Last Death Scythe” title. Everything felt as if it had been turned on it’s axis, leaving Spirit horizontal and everyone else vertical.  
Drawing closer to the Death Room doors, Spirit stopped in his tracks and clenched his fists in frustration..  
Now wasn’t the time for this.  
Was it ever?  
He didn’t belong there anymore.  
Then where did he belong?  
Anywhere but here.  
Polished Shoes clicking on the polished floor of the ever so tidy, shiny and perfect, well put together academy hallway, the redhead quickly turned and strode in the opposite direction, retracing his footsteps to the entrance of the DWMA. Thoughts swirled in his head maddeningly. Perhaps this is how Stein always felt. Spirit caught a bitter laugh in his throat. Maybe he was the blemish here. He was what went wrong, the last scrap of imperfection and indifferent counter production left of the old Lord Death’s rulings. Maybe he needed to leave. Really leave. There was no place for a washed up death scythe like him here any longer. The ache in his chest hadn’t subsided, and the weapon knew it wasn’t because of his hangover any longer.  
Lord Death was gone.  
Stein was, all but gone, to him anyway. He had a family now, a kid to raise… Marie.  
Ironic.  
Isn’t that what he had done to Stein all those years ago? It really shouldn't have come as a surprise to the weapon that Stein would do the same. There were no promises kept between them, no vows or emotionally wrought secrets from their childhood days. All that was left of their past were memories of feather light glances and deep green eyes with so much in them. Spirit had always been afraid that if he looked to closely he would drown in everything he found there.  
“What you lookin’ so sad about?” Abruptly, a familiar voice pulled Spirit from his thoughts. The weapons eyes flying up to meet a single gold one.  
Speaking of Marie.  
“Oh hey.” Spirit laughed weakly, unable to force his usual energy into his tone. “Marie. Don’t you have class?”  
The blonde smiled, shifting her gaze to just past Spirit’s shoulder nonchalantly. “Nope, no students for me this afternoon! I talked to Kid into letting me take a half day on the condition that I rest.” She giggled, stretching. Her arms fell to the side before habitually returning to play with her hair. “Although, to be honest, I just really didn’t want to work.”  
“Well that makes two of us.” Spirit pasted on half hearted smile, before quickly digging in his pocket for a cigarette.  
Marie crinkled her nose as he pulled one out. “Seriously Albarn?”  
Spirit paused midway through the motion, eyes scanning the blonde’s face for a trace of sarcasm before slowly returning the case to his pocket. He laughed nervously. “Sorry, it sorta slipped my mind… you know… the whole-” He gestured weakly at her still trim belly “- pregnancy thing.”  
Giggling, Marie brought a hand to her stomach. She wasn’t showing yet, but word travelled quickly, and Spirit was sure all of Death City knew about the baby by now. “It’s okay Spirit. I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose.”  
“Right.” Spirit murmured quietly, gaze drifting to the cityscape before them, everything looked so quiet, so peaceful. It was depressing. “So… have you uh… decided on a name for... it... yet?” he asked almost robotically. The words felt thick and heavy on Spirit’s tongue syllables falling darkly at his feet with every word.  
Marie didn't seem to notice, her smile glowing brightly as she spoke. “No, not really. We’ve tossed some names around but can’t seem to settle on one. Honestly though… I would kind of like to name them Crona whoever they are…” Her eyes softened at the edges as the name left her lips. A small frown settling on her soft features. She sniffed.  
Spirit swallowed. “That… that would be good Marie.” His mouth felt dry.

-

Somehow, the benevolent sun was already setting as Spirit finally made his way back to his apartment. The buildings were beginning to cast long shadows at his feet, shrouding the cobblestone path before him in streaks of gold and black, darkness and light. Things were quiet as the Death Scythe walked, his footsteps echoing in the empty streets and alleyways. He had taken this path to be alone, but the silence that fell upon him now seemed almost eerie in its abrupt stillness.  
His mind was still on Marie and their conversation earlier that afternoon. As much as he wanted to resent the weapon, he couldn’t bring himself hate her. Besides, Spirit mused bitterly to himself, if she was what made Stein happy, who was he to feel any differently? Who was he to even still be caught up on the things that happened between them over a decade ago?

-

 _“He’s going to tear you apart Spirit!” Kami’s emerald eyes flashed with fury. “LITERALLY!”_  
_He was sitting on her kitchen counter, shirt unbuttoned, facing down the wrath of a vicious madwoman, whom somehow he still loved. He felt a laugh bubble up through the thickness in his throat, uncertain and all but appropriate. “Don’t over exaggerate Kami. He would never-”_  
_“I’M OVER EXAGGERATING?” The blonde raged. “Spirit!! Have you SEEN yourself?” She gestured wildly about, hands tracing the vague outlines of… all of him._  
_Spirit swallowed a lump in his throat. He would not cry he would not cry. Steeling himself against the inevitable- he already knew they were there- Spirit looked down. Even from this angle, it was hard to deny the proof dancing across his bare torso. Thin red lines criss-crossing over his ribs, his chest. They were everywhere, they were everywhere and Spirit felt sick. He felt… nope, yep, he was going to be sick. Desperately grappling for Kami’s kitchen sink, Spirit heaved, remnants of that morning’s breakfast leaving him physically and emotionally empty all too quickly._  
_“You need a new partner Spirit. This can't keep going on! What are you going to do? Let him keep tearing you apart until you look just like him?!”_  
_The words sent a flash of the other meister’s face through his thoughts. Gaunt face, pale and always deathly tired. Stitches travelling up, past his meister’s cheekbone, into his hairline. When had that happened even? He looked like a patchwork doll, skin too white, eyes too glassy, face immovable of any expression. Brightly reflective glasses, Madness brimming at the corners of his wide green eyes every time they looked to him. Except when there wasn’t. That’s what Kami didn’t see. That was why Spirit couldn’t just leave him. He knew he was the balance to Stein’s madness, the antithesis to his cool cynicism. He knew Stein needed him, and he couldn’t just leave._  
_It was in the subtle glances. The shared evenings on their tiny threadbare couch. Spirit playing videogames, while Stein read some overzealous novella in German or Russian or another confusing foreign language Spirit couldn't understand. It was in the way his meister didn’t lean away from him, like he did everyone else. Their shared comfort within each other's presence was something rare and valuable to both of them- Spirit had sensed. He was nearly positive that Stein trusted nobody else, only let his guard down when he was alone- except with Spirit, he was the exception. He was the one who saw all the meister’s facades fall at the end of the day. How tired he looked, how young he actually still was. Sometimes the weapon forgot, Stein was still younger than him, that was something that wouldn’t change; albeit the countless battles, bloodshed, and loss. How else could they resonate? They needed each other. How else could they have done this for years without breaking one another with their ever increasing differences and needs?_  
_Kami didn’t see it, and Spirit knew she’d never understand. To everyone else, his partner was a wild card; Never showing up for class, yet somehow rapidly becoming the best meister the DWMA had ever produced. Speaking little when he was there, and putting up that all too familiar mask of clinical indifference that alienated everybody. It unnerved them, understandably, it had unnerved Spirit too when they were first introduced to one another, but he got used to it, grew fond of it. They just didn’t understand._  
_“-You have to tell him.” Kami pushed, her urgent tone pulling Spirit back with dizzying clarity. Stein’s actions were beginning to have consequences, that much was clear. The question now was, how severe would the ramifications be with all of this coming to light? That was an outcome only Spirit could control… and apparently, now, Kami. “Lord Death will reassign you. I’ll be your meister, I’ll make you a Death Weapon. It doesn’t have to be him anymore. You’ll be safe here! Meisters have wielded two weapons at once before. I’m good, I know I can do it Spirit.”_  
_Spirit held his head. It was all too much; the scars, tracing his body like a patchwork quilt, Kami’s pleading, Stein’s madness. He felt like he was falling, the ground shifting under his feet creating a strange sense of vertigo in his girlfriend’s well lit kitchen. Something inside him felt like it was about to snap- “Kami stop - I just - I - need to be alone.” He was out the door before his sentence ended, buttoning his shirt hastily , shielding himself from the morning light before it could drape across his skin, warm and inviting. It was all too much. Things would never be right after this. A feeling deep in his gut, akin to dread, knew; this was the end of everything good Spirit had ever known._

-  
Confrontation was Death Scythe’s least favourite thing, he avoided it like the kishin himself. Why else had he found himself at Chupacabra’s for yet another night of excessive consumption? One more bottle in his cold, now unfamiliar hands. The fakest smile he had ever produced, plastered on his flushed face, thoughts jumbled by the pleasant fog of alcohol. How many had he had now? Four? Ten? Something around there.  
Blair was giggling at something another patron was saying and Spirit shifted his attention to the warm lights cascading down from the ceiling. The noise, the laughter- the bar felt more familiar than his own empty apartment these days. He couldn’t handle the cool feeling of solitude anymore; seeping into his skin like the wax from a burning candle, blood red and searing in all of it’s definity. Spirit’s disjointed unease at that revelation caused him to take another hearty swig from the open bottle. What was he drinking? The weapon lifted the container in his hands to his eyes, spilling a fair amount over himself as he moved. Wine… Why was he drinking wine? Why was he drinking a whole bottle of wine? He hated wine. He opened his mouth to speak- “I….. hate wine.” was all that came out  
“No you don’t silly!” Another familiar feminine voice giggled. Everyone was so happy here. It was depressing  
“I hate wine” Spirit repeated, before taking another swig. “- and I hate this place…”  
“Then why are you here every night Death Scythe?” The voice teased, humor lacing her syrupy words with fondness that felt too intimate for a bartender. He hated it.  
Spirit felt overwhelmed, it was probably just the alcohol, but words were spilling from his mouth before he even realized he was still talking. “I hate my life, and I hate this stupid tie-” he loosened it around his neck, suddenly reminded of the knot in a noose. “- and i hate that title, this city, my stupid empty apartment-” He felt tears stinging at the corner of his eyes. “- I hate Kami... and I hate Stein-”  
“Well that’s a little rude.”  
Spirit felt his world shift again, mouth slamming shut, head slingshotting upwards as the aforementioned meister slid into view.  
Stein looked the same as he always did, even with the tint of booze colouring Spirit’s vision. His glasses, reflecting sterilely off of the warm lighting to create a perfectly eerie picture of composure, save for the familiar taut smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I came here to check on you, Senpai, and that’s the kind of warm welcome I get?” The meister feigned admonishment.  
Humor felt strange to Spirit, coming out of Stein, but it was something he had noticed about the meister when he seemingly waltzed nonchalantly back into Death City a little over a year ago, bringing with him a world of emotions Spirit thought he had buried deep long ago. Yet despite his abrupt reappearance in Spirit’s daily life, it wasn’t Stein’s all too familiar appearance that baffled Spirit the most. It was as if the meister had either suddenly begun expressing and feeling emotions, or, more believably, had gotten far better at feigning them. The latter seemed far more likely, but his consistently uncharacteristic behaviour led the weapon to entertain the thought that somehow his meister’s time away had cured him of his blatant disregard for regular human empathy. Either way, Stein’s monotonous drawl did little to calm Spirit’s racing thoughts. “How- how long have you been here?” He heard himself exclaim. Too loud, his voice pitched, too high.  
The smirk stayed on Stein’s lips “About half a bottle ago.” Leaning down, the meister casually took the bottle from Spirit’s hands and shook it in front of his face, as if to say he’d had enough. He then, reached over and put it on the bar’s countertop, out of the weapon’s reach, the shine falling off of this glasses as he did so, to reveal those familiar deep green eyes, shadowed in permanent insomnia. They flicked back to Spirit as he set the bottle down and the weapon felt his face begin to heat up. “Come with me, I have something to talk to you about.”


	2. Weakness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stein places himself in Spirit's comfort zone

Time felt like it passed in only seconds and decades. How long had he been lying there this time? Minutes? Hours? Days? It couldn’t have been days, that at least, was a given. If it had been days, someone would have come calling after him by now. He was nearly positive that his absence would be noticed had it been that long.  
Daylight filtered in through the soft curtains- Marie’s latest addition- and across the cool concrete floor of Stein’s patchwork lab. He couldn’t find the motivation to move just yet, but by the angle of the sun, he theorized it was somewhere around noon. It wasn’t as if Stein had been sleeping. He had classes today, students waiting, he understood responsibility, but he simply couldn’t move. His limbs felt like they were made out of lead- Hadn’t they always been that way? The events of the Kishin’s undoing was finally settling over him, like a fog. Sure, the madness had quieted, it wasn’t gone. Stein was sure it would never be gone entirely, there had only been a sliver of his life where he lived without the constant static teeming restlessly at the back of his head. That moment had been short lived; rushing from his life in a whirlwind of red hair and teary blue eyes.

  
He turned the screw.

  
The student’s really didn't need his presence today, the kishin was defeated and they all deserved at least a miniscule second of rest between catching up on missed classes and healing their minor wounds from battle. He was certain Black ★ Star, or another rowdy peer would pressure their classmates into silence over his absence anyways.

He turned the screw.

  
A baby… He knew, as an apparent father-to-be, he was supposed to feel joy, or some sort of giddiness over Marie’s revelation. He knew before anyone else did, after all- sensing the growing soul wavelength within her weeks before even she had noticed. Yet it was with dreadful clarity that Stein realized what he had done. As much as he could fool himself into believing it to be his own paranoia- he knew that with the child, came an overwhelming statistical probability that it carried, at best, a small trace of his own roiling madness. That knowledge sent a chill through the meister, so definite in its actuality that Stein was certain he had already cursed another human being with the weight of his own insanity before it was even born.  
And then there was Spirit. The noticeably displaced Death Scythe that had been shadowing his every movement since the first moment they resonated again back in Italy.  
He could picture the wide smile on his ex-partner’s face when Marie announced her condition “We can’t take our eyes off these guys!” He sounded so excited that Stein almost believed the other’s genuine enthusiasm. It was only in Spirit’s subtle tells- the way his wide blue eyes didn’t quite meet Stein’s as he glanced between the pair, the abruptness of his fallen expression as he turned away to engage in the rest of the festivities, the way he fiddled with his fire red hair thoughtfully- Stein knew Spirit was feigning elation.  
It was almost humorous, that after all their years apart, the meister felt as if he could still read the weapon like an open book. Spirit’s predictable disposition was a sort of comfort to the meister in its sameness. Even after Kami’s renowned effect on the weapon, he seemed to have remained, in all actuality steadfastly true to his fundamental self- that was, insecure and overly empathetic about nearly everything. Not to mention, a bad liar.

He turned the screw.

  
Maybe if he laid there long enough, he would dissipate into only the atoms and spaces between them that made up his being. Maybe he’d disappear. Although past experimentation would prove otherwise. It wasn’t for lack of trying, that the meister carried on, existed; felt the air fill and empty his lungs in a maddeningly habitual way. That was, the human condition, after all- to exist, take space, feel things. At the moment he felt irritated.

He turned the screw.

  
They had been alone together for far too long, the weight of the end of the world leaning heavily atop both their shoulders, making them weary and careless. Stein didn't ask Marie to follow him, and he certainly didn’t expect her to stay with him as long as she had. It was only out of ardent desperation that the two even remained within each other's company long enough for it to have become- to Stein- a nagging, overbearing, problem. He recognized Marie’s misguided feelings towards him years before the weapon was aware he did, he just chose to ignore them; out of his own convenience. It was only due to the recent stagnant string of time and stress that their shifting dynamic had even come to a mutual sort of light. Stein would be hard pressed to admit that Marie’s wanton desires didn’t sway him after years of his own self imposed solitude. But it was with a taut smile and reverent admittance that Stein even entertained Marie’s hope- that there was anything at all to grasp onto between the two of them. It almost seemed, to Stein, another form of madness.  
He’d experienced it only once himself, the overwhelming and all consuming repercussion of total amorous infatuation. It tore him apart then, and he could see it happening to Marie so efficiently now. He at times wondered if the kishin’s influence on the world was what had pushed Marie to even act on her impulses in the first place. It wasn’t unexpected, or wholly unwelcome at the time, but the longer the consequences sat between them, the crazier Stein felt he would become. He was no father, and certainly ill equipped to be anything close to a figure of authority for an helpless infant. It was foolish of him to entertain the weapon’s desire in the first place, he had reasoned through some disjointed explanation to himself, that she needed him at the time- as if it wasn't the other way around. It was, he supposed, an unfortunate side effect of feigning empathy for so long, he hypothesized he had begun to actually feel it. The current outcome seemed to unfortunately prove it.

He turned the screw.

  
Somewhere in the dim halls of his laboratory, a door slammed.  
“Ah, I suppose it must be later than I estimated then.” Stein mused half heartedly to the stitched up ceiling. He could hear quick footfalls on the concrete, followed by the tell tale clack-clack-ing of Marie’s heels. A small, habitual, countdown began in the back of Stein’s head as he trained his eyes on the closed doorway. ‘3-2-1…’  
“Stein are you in- ah, there you are!” Marie had all but barged into his room, bringing the warmth and sunshine of the outside with her.  
Stein raised his hand into a half hearted wave as he gazed at her upside down, over his glasses. “Here and accounted for.” He drawled, unable to put any real effort into the greeting. The day had been long and arduous enough already, he wasn’t about to adjust for someone else’s comfort.  
Marie didn’t seem to notice, smiling as she made her way into the bedroom, her eye scanning the stark same-ness of the bedroom with mild distaste. In her arms, she had several shopping bags, a few dangling from her wrists heavily. “I stopped by the shops on the way home! I thought I’d pick up a few more things to spruce up the place.” She set her bags down in the middle of the room, barely stopping to take a breath. “You really are lacking in some pretty basic stuff Stein. You know, after all these years I figured you would have at least bought yourself a decent lamp or a blanket of some kind. I mean seriously-”  
There was something familiarly comforting in the constant babble of the blonde weapon. He found it ironic that both his past housemates had a habit of speaking so easily without much thought or foresight. Words seemed to spill out of the two of them like uninhibited waterfalls. Stein examined that maybe it was a part of himself that drew these types of people, something he was lacking, that his subconscious grossly overcompensated for by picking the partners he had wielded in the past. Of course, he speculated, that it may also have been why in the end he chose to have no partner at all.  
“Marie, you really didn’t have to do that.” Stein replied, simply out of duty to the structure of their conversation. It was normal for people to express gratitude in this way, not that he particularly felt it. There was a reason, after all, why Stein had chosen to keep his lab the way that he had for so long.  
Marie flushed “Oh no, it’s alright, really. I wanted to! Plus, I figured it would give me something to do tonight instead of sitting around worrying about classes tomorrow morning.”  
Stein replied with a nonchalant hum and shifted his gaze back to the ceiling.  
Marie continued talking, her voice chirping casually over the room’s atmosphere, warming it with her presence as she unpacked bag after bag of unnecessary household decorations. Stein was worried his lab would soon become a hoarder’s paradise with the amount of shopping Marie had done recently.  
“- which reminds me! I saw Spirit this afternoon also.”  
Her voice cut through his thoughts abruptly, Sprit’s name pricking like a needle on some part of his buried reverie. Stein’s eyes snapped back to the blonde, who was wholly consumed in her task of fitting together a metal desk lamp.  
“He seemed preoccupied though.” She mused. “You know, to be honest, I don't think Spirit should take his job so seriously these days. I mean, he’s a death weapon just like the rest of us! It really makes everyone else look bad, you know? Like me, skipping work so early in the afternoon.” Marie giggled innocently, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it's great that he takes his work so seriously. But he isn’t leaving much for the rest of us to do!”  
“You’re assuming Spirit has something to do?” Stein prompted, watching her fumble with the lampshade before accidentally letting it fall to the ground, defeated.  
Marie snorted “That’s a good point I guess.” She set the parts on the ground and thoughtfully twisted her hair around her fingers. “He just looked busy. You know, like when someone has something important on their mind?” She wondered thoughtfully “But I guess you’re right, you know, It isn’t like there’s really much going on right now. Since all the aftermath has already been dealt with…”  
Stein merely nodded in silent agreement. “And Spirit?”  
Marie blinked, eyes finally looking up at him. “Sorry, what?”  
“You said he seemed preoccupied…”  
“Oh that!” The blonde mused, returning to her task nonchalantly. “I’m sure it was nothing. You know Spirit though, always worrying about something. His head is in the clouds, like, half the time anyways!” She babbled. “Sometimes I feel like he has just as many screws loose as you do.”  
Stein snorted at that. “Maybe I rubbed off on him then…”  
“I certainly hope not!” The weapon admonished, finally fitting the lamp together functionally and beaming with content.  
“I’m going out.” Stein grunted, sitting up for the first time that day and stretching his stiff muscles, willing away the vertigo as he stood. “Besides, you said you have some decorating to do. I wouldn’t want to get in you way.”  
Marie laughed obligingly. “Don’t stay out too late. It’s getting dark in a few hours.”  
“Yeah sure.” Stein dismissed her worries with a casual wave and smile before stepping out the room and striding quickly down the hallway. The lab felt stuffy, he, needed out. It was as if Marie’s conversation had chipped away at a part of something within himself he had long ago passed off as dead and buried.  
As much as Stein tried, he couldn’t get the image of Spirit out of his mind.

He turned the screw.

-

The night was cool and familiar as the laughing sun slowly descended the horizon, making way for the screaming black moon that brought with it threads of unbridled madness. Stein postured it could someday bring it’s own series of problems, another issue to bring up with Kid the next time he was summoned to the Death Room he supposed. The finality of the Kishin’s defeat was etched in everyone’s memories, cemented only by the moon’s scarred surface. Yet Stein could hear it every night, the static growing only slightly louder as the shape ascended menacingly above death city. A primal part of his being whispered back that something remained up there, breathing whispers hypnotically into the ears of those who dared to listen.  
As the shadows morphed and stretched, Stein allowed a little tension to bleed off his being. He hadn’t spoken to Spirit alone since their fight together with Medusa. A small part of Stein wondered if his rapid descent into madness had anything to do with Spirit’s avoidance. As much as he theorized this to be incorrect, he couldn't help but harbor a faint amount of insecurity around this fact. A weakness, he attributed to Spirit alone. His clear disdain for others had always seemed to stop at Spirit, making the redhead an impossible exception to Stein’s rigid rules and forthright demeanor. It was a deficiency he both resented and guarded, something within himself he could never quite shake off.  
His feet hit the threshold of Chupacabra’s before the meister could fully register where he had wound up. Of course, he mused cooly. If Spirit would be anywhere, it was here.  
Stepping into the tavern was like being soaked through with a bucket full of ice water. The brightly decorated room served as a stark contrast to the dreary bleakness of nightfall. It was loud and rambunctious, and smelled strongly of fried food and stale alcohol. Inwardly cringing at the state of the building, Stein’s gaze drifted among the patrons, looking for a familiar shock of red amidst the lively bustle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's funny, I find it far easier to write for Stein, if it isn't apparent in my drawn out introspection. I don't know what that says about me, personally, but it probably isn't great.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was born of my need for an accurate portrayal of these two and the events following the Kishin's defeat that stays true to the Manga's cannon.  
> F.t. I will find a way around this baby plot line and these two will love each other


End file.
